“Michael, if this is a post about Mad Mel, why did you use a picture of a homeless hobo who screams at the pigeons in the park and once got arrested for fucking a half-eaten hot dog bun he found in the trash?” – you

Mel Gibson’s “directorial comeback movie”Hacksaw Ridge screened at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend and the audience loved it so much that they gave it a 10 minute standing ovation. The producers must have installed retractable spikes in every seat, because that’s the only reason I can come up with for why those tricks didn’t sit down for 10 minutes! Or maybe the producers dangled exact rubber replicas of Jon Hamm’s Hammaconda above the audience and they all spent 10 minutes trying to catch that goodness with their mouths? That must be it.

While promoting Hacksaw Ridge, Mel said that superhero movies aren’t his thing, which is funny since he looks like the Maestro Hulk. During a press conference at the Venice Film Festival, Mel said that the difference between real superheroes and comic book superheroes is that real superheroes don’t “wear Spandex.” Mad Mel continued to trash talk superhero movies (and Spandex) in a looooooooooooooooong interview with Deadline.

Mel and Deadline got into talking about movie budgets. Mel made that Apocalypto mess for a little more than $30 million and he was able to keep the budget low-ish on Hacksaw Ridge by shooting it in Australia. Thanks to the good exchange rate for the U.S. dollar at the time, their $27 million budget turned into a $40 million budget. Deadline asked Mel what he thinks about superhero movies with budgets that are bigger than his throbbing ego.

DEADLINE: What do you think when you read about all of these big summer movies that cost $200 million and up? Do they have to be that expensive?

GIBSON: I don’t believe so. I look at them and scratch my head. I’m really baffled by it. I think there’s a lot of waste, but maybe if I did one of those things with the green screens I’d find out different. I don’t know. Maybe they do cost that much. I don’t know. It seems to me that you could do it for less.

DEADLINE: If you hit, the rewards can be enormous, but you’ve got to make a lot of money to just break even.

GIBSON: That’s the game, isn’t it?

Mel asked what Batman v. Superman’s budget was, and then made it clear that if BvS offered to blow him while doing the Nazi salute, he’d turn it down. That’s how much he didn’t like it:

GIBSON: Wow, I mean if you’re spending outrageous amounts of money, $180 million or more, I don’t know how you make it back after the tax man gets you, and after you give half to the exhibitors. What did they spend on Batman V Superman that they’re admitting to?

DEADLINE: I want to say $250 million. Then you’ve got marketing.

GIBSON: And it’s a piece of shit.

DEADLINE: Well it was self-serious and it wasn’t fun at all.

GIBSON: I’m not interested in the stuff. Do you know what the difference between real superheroes and comic book superheroes is? Real superheroes didn’t wear spandex. So I don’t know. Spandex must cost a lot.

Yes, Mel really repeated that Spandex joke. Mel isn’t wrong about the crazy budgets of superhero movies, but his stupid ass is so wrong about Spandex. Real-life superheroes do wear Spandex. See: Real-life superhero Richard Simmons. And well, at least you now know that if a snarling Mad Mel is ever running toward you, wave some Spandex at him, and he’ll run the other way. Spandex is the real fabric of our lives because it keeps you looking sexy and keeps Mel Gibson away.

Here’s the rough trade version of Radio Man with the cast of Hacksaw Ridge (Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving and Vince Vaughn) at the Venice Film Festival premiere on Sunday:

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